The Dev Diaries so far (ok, there have only been 2
) have been over a month apart, so maybe DD3 mid-November, DD4 .. end of December? Which is holidays, so early Jan. I doubt they would do a beta before DD4, so beta late Jan, maybe release in Feb.
Best thing is just to expect it at the end of March, best way to keep a low blood-pressure, and if they are earlier it will be a nice surprise
I mean, no one should be getting high blood pressure over the release of a computer game in any case, but yeah, I've been around here long enough to know what you mean.
I know sodium is bad for hypertension!
Yeah, it's possible, who knows. I'm happy either way. One way we get it sooner, the other it gets more polish and hopefully slightly fewer bugs.
What I will say is: we don't know if the six weeks between diaries one and two means they're on a six-week turnaround, or an "about a month" turnaround and it just took longer than expected. After all, Arthur Tolmie was talking, a week or two
before the second dev diary released, about just having seen an early cut that couldn't yet be released because it needed careful re-editing (and re-staging?) to excise evidence of unannounced features. As time goes on and more is announced, less and less care is needed in that respect.
So it could be as you've said, or it could be end-October DD3, early-December DD4, more reveals and a beta before Christmas. Or they could string them out till April.
One thing that
would surprise me is there being no beta at all. They're saying this is the biggest update Elite has ever had. The FC update is peanuts to Odyssey and its beta process was an absolute saga (no pun intended). The game is a behemoth compared to when Horizons was added. I think there will be a
lengthy beta in several stages over several weeks. Release date is for the final release, so if they're to hit the Q1 deadline, even a February/March beta launch would be pushing things.